Scientists at CERN, the European nuclear physics research center, are readying their Large Hadron Collider particle acceslerator for a restart after an upgrade in an effort to find more particles beyond the Higgs Boson.
Particles even more exotic and exciting than the Higgs could be detected when the even-more powerful accelerator resume operations in March, researchers say.
The discovery in 2012 of the Higgs, which gives all matter mass and is the cornerstone of the Standard Model of physics, led to the awarding of the Nobel Prize for physics in 2013.
Researchers are hopeful the LHC -- capable of generating twice as much power following a two-year upgrade -- will be able to dig even deeper into the subatomic world of particles by smashing protons together at incredible energies and studying the particles that fly out of those collisions.
One of those could be the first so-called "supersymmetric" particle to appear in the LHC, possibly a gluino, which could help scientists better understand dark matter, thought to account for most of the matter in the universe.
Such a discovery "could be as early as this year ... if we are really lucky," Beate Heinemann, a physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
"Maybe we will find now supersymmetric matter," said Heinemann, who is part of the ATLAS research team, one of several research teams using the accelerator.
Supersymmetry is a theoretical extension of the standard physics model that could fill in some perplexing gaps in our understanding of matter.
The theory suggests all particles have a counterpart version that is more massive, and if such particles exist then the LHC, with its upgraded energy potential, should be able to detect them.
The existence of mysterious dark matter is one of those gaps in the standard model, as it cannot explain its existence, and supersymmetry -- if proved by new particles coming out of LHC experiments during its upcoming three-year run -- could offer "a more comprehensive picture of our world," CERN states on its website.
Such "superparticles" were not seen by the LHC at its previous power levels, which is why the accelerator was upgraded to double its collision energy.
"We hope that we're just now at this threshold that we're finding another world, like antimatter for instance," says Heinemann. "We found antimatter in the beginning of the last century. Maybe we'll find now supersymmetric matter."
